future became more like texas it wouldn't be as terrible as i thought. that's all for this evening. the rachel maddow show starts now. good evening. >> i can hear the televisions turning on in texas right now to reward you for that last statement. thank you. >> not as bad as i thought. thanks for staying with us. there is a lot going on in the news today including a lot of fast breaking stories over the course of this afternoon and later the poisoned letters, the ricin letters that were sent last week to the white house and to a u.s. senator. it seemed like that story was mostly over and done with as of a few days ago but today that story broke back open in a very strange way. we'll have more on that in just a second. also today there was a very short but deep kind of a mini crash on the stock market. it all happened in two minutes. the market came right back afterwards and finished way up. but the reason for the short, deep crash is a weird and

worrying one. we have the story ahead as well. plus more turnover announced in the u.s. senate today where u.s. senators apparently can't wait to quit or require or otherwise leave on their own terms. we have news on all of those stories coming up. today in boston the investigation into the boston marathon bombings continues. we now know that trained fbi interrogators who work on the high value interrogation group have been speaking with the bombing suspects since the moment that he woke up in the hospital in boston. so far sources in a position to know about the initial interrogation say the suspect has said that he and his brother were not in contact with outside terrorist groups but were motivated by their religious beliefs. today it was also reported that the suspect made specific mention of the u.s. wars in iraq and afghanistan in reference to a potential motive for the bombing.

nbc news reporting according to a senior government official, quote, they got instructions on how to make bombs from the internet. today a little more detail arose. a new hampshire company called phantom fireworks said it had sold fireworks to the older suspect, the older of the two brothers. phantom fireworks discovered the sale after going through their records following the boston bombings. the company says it was back in february at its store in seabrook, new hampshire when they sold tamerlan tsarnaev a pair of lock and load reloadable mortar kits for $199 apiece. the company executive telling the report, barely legal right above where it says locked and load. the company executive told reporters today the amount of combustible or explosive material that a person might be able to recover from this particular fireworks kit would not have been enough to make the bombs made in boston last week.

that is the word from that company official. in terms of fireworks being a source of explosive material for improvised explosive devices we are familiar with that concept in part because of the times square bomber. remember he used fireworks powder in his own poorly designed explosives that failed to detonate in times square in 2010. he had reportedly been trained in person in pakistan by militant groups there. powder recovered from fireworks is also described in the instructions for assembling improvised devices that were published in the al qaeda magazine "inspire" published online. during his interrogation in the hospital, the surviving suspect in the bombings in boston is reported to have said he and his brother, quote, read the instructions at that al qaeda magazine. indeed, the whole how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom thing, that was not an essay about bomb making and why it's a

good idea but a set of very specific detailed instructions. the by line was a pakistani american guy writing in relatively accessible americanese english. the al qaeda magazine is not the only place you can get a specific instruction manual about explosives. probably to the chagrin of our corporate overlords or whoever monitors our online networks here at 30 rock it only took me five minutes of googling to find specific instructions on making explosives are all over. not just discussions about it or ideological debates, people exhorting other people to do it but actual step by step instructions. when i was looking today for whatever reason white supremacists groups seemed to have some of the most quickly accessible step by steps online for bidding all sorts of bombs. this goes through not only how to make pipe bombs but common mistakes for makers of pipe bombs that might result in you blowing yourself up and how you can avoid those common mistakes. they talk about how to make pipe bombs from nonmetallic materials to try to sneak them through

metal detectors. very specific information. i have no idea if it's true information. i don't know how to make bombs. but those specific instructions, the step by step instructions that could make a person believe they know how are not hard to find at all. it is news worthy to know that now. because it is news worthy to know that nobody has to travel anywhere or get any specific in person training from some expert somewhere in order to access instructions for making explosives. bomb making is essentially open source information. and it has been that way for a long time. it has been that way since before the internet. in the late 1960s and early 1970s the u.s. went through a period when we had lots of bombings. in 1969 for example bombs went off at pomona college in southern california, san francisco state, northern california.

also in the department of commerce and the federal building and army induction shun center and criminal court building all in new york city. the next year somebody bombed the university of wisconsin at madison and the portland, oregon city hall. the death and injury toll was never in any high numbers for any one of these attacks but still in the late '60s early '70s bombs were going off a lot in that time in our history. bombs set off by politically motivated assailants. from the middle of that emerged thchl the anarchist cookbook published in 1971. it really caused a lot freak out when it first came out. people sent letters to the fbi. seemingly average citizens handwriting letters to j. edgar hoover the head of the fbi. dear mr. hoover. look at this. you wouldn't allow them to put this book on the market, would you? democratic congressman from texas wrote into the fbi to say that his constituents have expressed alarm and concern over this anarchist cookbook. quote, i have not seen the book

myself but apparently the reviews have caused quite a controversy. he had all those letters from citizens and lawmakers and you can see them easily actually now because the fbi a few years ago released their big dossier of all their communication in and oust the bureau about this book. there is also the headlines from the papers from the time. look. book teaches do it yourself anarchy and recipes for sabotage destruction. but for all that legitimate concern expressed at the time and the fbi wrote back saying, yes, we are concerned too and for all those expressions of concern there was no way to stop its publication. today you can still buy something that is called the anarchist cookbook on amazon. amazon says it is in stock as of this afternoon and they'll offer to gift wrap it for you. also while you are there you will see if you scroll down the page an author's note from the guy who wrote it saying he does not want it to be published. he has been trying for decades to have it not circulated anymore. the copy write is not in his name as an author so he found himself powerless to block the

continued propogation of the anarchist cookbook. he is essentially asking people to stop buying it and stop propagating it. the fact that his author's note is attached to a book for sale online show that his efforts have been in vain. the book is still circulating. he also notes and this is important, he notes the circumstances under which he wrote the anarchist cookbook. he says first of all i was 19 when i wrote it. he says he wrote it mostly out of fear and anger that he was going to be drafted into the vietnam war. he says he researched the content of the book including the bomb recipes and the rest of it not through any specialized access he had through super top-secret explosives labs or something. he researched the whole anarchist cookbook at the new york public library. he says he mostly used military manuals many of which you can still get at the new york public library. the information about how to do scary and violent things is basically always has been open

source information. it is available to those who want it. a convenient if amateurish sloppy collating of that information into something called the anarchist cookbook that got a lot of attention in the 1970s resulted in that maybe being more widely disseminated than it otherwise would have been but the information has always been there and accessible to anybody who wanted it. that has stayed true as time and technology advanced. now for example you can find things online or printed on chat books, things that call themselves some version of the anarchist cookbook but now they also include instructions for all sorts of things that didn't exist in the early '70s. everything from cellular phone hacking plus all the explosives and drug stuff that used to be there. all the stuff people used to do in your parents' day plus the stuff people do now. j. edgar hoover could not stop

bomb making from being published as open source material for the american public in the early 1970s. there is no reason to believe that law enforcement can stop this information from being published either in print or online now. wishing that were not so does not make it so. sticking our heads in the sand about it and pretending it is not happening is not just a form of weakness but a form of dumb. this information is out there. how do we adjust? how does law enforcement handle the fact they have to assume that anybody out there who wants to set off bombs can learn how to easily. how does it affect policing? how does it affect the response to bombing incidents like what just happened in boston that you do not need and you really never have needed instructions from some expert out there helping you along in your bomb making career? you can do it yourself. joining us now is jim cavanaugh a former a.t.f. special agent in charge. thank you very much for being with us tonight. appreciate it. >> hello, rachel.

>> is there any difference today with bomb making instructions available online compared to before the internet where this information was available and around but not so easily? >> it's faster now and easier to get. you could put your slippers on and go down with your computer and google it. you tell the history so right here with the bombings of the '70s. i could take you back to the 16th street baptist church in 1964 where a dynamite bomb killed four little girls. we had so many bombings in the '70s, large dynamite bombs all over the place. we would frequently find anarchist cookbook and other bomb manuals at the bomber's house when we served the search warrants. it was researched at the libraries, bought in clandestine safe houses and stuff. it was everywhere. it just wasn't as easy to get. >> what did the explosive

control act do to make do it yourself bomb makers jobs any harder? >> what the explosive control act did is it made a stronger law so that we could stop the bombers and we could catch the bombers and prosecute the bombers. the best way to stop it is to let nobody get away with it. you know, you wonder why people still bomb because who is getting away with these cases? eric rudolph, timothy mcveigh, fizal shahzad, these two brothers in boston, abortion clinic bombers? we rounded them up in many waves. who is getting away with this? they think they can but the united states government has taken agents like atf and fbi over the last 60 years and taken bomb squads and we've become unbelievable experts at investigating these things. it's the worst thing to do because we are pretty good at catching the people. now when you have the digital age, iphones, crowds,

surveillance, that is helpful, too. of course, they're very difficult cases on their face and that is why there is so much resources put into it by the government. >> if dzhokhar tsarnaev is telling authorities the truth that he and his brother got bomb making instructions online maybe in part from al qaeda's online magazine "inspire" i looked at the specific instructions there and i can't boil an egg but i think if i worked at it long enough i might be able to follow those instructions if i wanted to. do the people who follow those kinds of instructions who haven't been expertly trained, do they need to practice? would you expect you'll find they've set off bombs out in the woods somewhere, or been working on something so they were able to make a working device? >> you are exactly right. in many bomb cases we would go back and look for, probably all bomb cases a place where they

tested their bombs. did they own some acreage? did their parents have a farm? did they have access to a rural area or a place they could test the bomb? a lot of times lo and bloeld we'd find a test bomb. not in all cases but frequently. what "inspire" does that is so insidious is it gives very detailed instructions on reliable bomb making and they've tested these things themselves. you have a bomb master somewhere in the world who made the bomb over and over again and worked the kinks out. so they give you the recipe. it is basically a recipe. somebody at the cooking lab has made the recipe. they write it down and when you make the cake wow it's great. you make the cookies wow it's great. it is always better if you practice and your bomb will come out just like your cake and be a lot better if you practice. the interesting thing about boston i think is these are three pressure cooker bombs at least. these are improvised claymore mines and they all reliably

detonate. they all reliably detonate. they've been carried in backpacks so they've been bounced around. you're walking down a street. fusing and firing system in there is being jostled a little bit. you know, we don't know until the fbi lab comes back and the forensic etf guys look at it all but, you know, it looks like there is a chance -- these are remote controlled and command detonated devices so they are placed, if it turns out to be they're command detonated which looks to me like it is based on the timing and placement and the circuitry i've seen -- that is a pretty good bomb. it takes a little instruction and training. maybe a little practice. it's not to say the older brother didn't get some of that. i think he radicalized here first and probably went over there and maybe met some radicals, got esconfidenced in what i call the al qaeda virus, what they spread around the world.

bin laden is dead but the virus is alive. >> jim cavanaugh former special agent in charge thank you very much for helping us understand this. >> thanks rachel. >> we'll be watching to find out if anybody is ever connected to these guys. at this point from the initial interrogation and investigation we're told the surviving bomber is claiming no personal connection with anybody else who radicalized these brothers or trained them. who knows if that is true? obviously that's what they're working on right now. this story is not going to go away for a long time no matter how much we want it to as this continues to unfold. we'll be right back. oh this is soft.

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i work for 47 different companies. well, technically i work for one. that company, the united states postal service® works for thousands of home businesses. because at usps.com® you can pay, print and have your packages picked up for free. i can even drop off free boxes. i wear a lot of hats. well, technically i wear one.

the u.s. postal service®, no business too small. one measure of the intensity of the last week's news cycle has been one of the stories that essentially got kicked out of leading news all together was that somebody sent a deadly poison ricin to the white house and to a u.s. senator and mississippi judge. not that a threat was made but the actual poison was mailed in letters and sent to those recipients. the letters tested positive for ricin both in field tests and in subsequent lab tests. the main reason i think that story got lost is because of what it was competing with in the news cycle. a pair of other terrorism and disaster stories that were unfolding at the same time. another reason the story sort of surfaced last week and then went away all together was because there was a big development in the case that made it seem like it was over. made it seem like they caught the guy. the guy they arrested was maybe

not really worth worrying about too much. >> a suspect identified as paul kevin curtis was arrested at his home in corinth, mississippi. the fbi says he is the man who tried to send two allegedly poisoned letters to president obama and mississippi senator roger wicker. curtis is a colorful character describing himself on his facebook page as a karate enthusiast and elvis impersonator but now the stage is a jailhouse and mr. curtis is facing serious charges. >> elvis impersonator? yeah. there was sort of a sideshow aspect to the arrest in this case in mississippi last week which i think helped it drop out of the news. the man who was arrested had this amazing online profile as an entertainer that involved being a country singer as you heard there an elvis impersonator, karate, respect the dragon stuff. also the line that was reportedly printed in those ricin letters, the line i am k.c. and i approve this message is a line this individual used in online postings before.

specifically in online postings that sometimes seemed a little nutty or a little paranoid. so the combination of details we had made it seem like however dramatic the initial headlines about somebody sending ricin to the white house and a senator the story might basically be over. then today it was finally a press conference in the case and to the extent there has been any just pure spectator value to the story simply because of its wacky factor the press conference today in mississippi did not disappoint. >> i'm holding today the order of dismissal that dismisses the charges lodged against paul kevin curtis. the government was able to basically find another suspect who we believe is the true perpetrator of this heinous crime say without further delay, kevin curtis. >> i would like to thank all my family, friends, and fans for their love and support over this past week but most importantly i

would like to thank jesus christ who has been and will always be my best friend, my bodyguard, my teacher, and my almighty judge. divine intervention led this amazing, beautiful blonde, blue-eyed angel to my jail cell. i would like to add that right now i can't really afford to pay her the million she is worth. >> whatever. >> i am a licensed, certified reflexologist and i'll start with foot massage therapy. she'll be my first client and i'll donate 100,000 hours to community service in northeast mississippi to all you ladies who need foot massage therapy. >> what are your immediate plans? >> find my dog, muchow. she got out when homeland security swarmed in on me when i went to check my mail. i haven't heard anything. i'm really worried about her. i bought a fish a week before. >> i got muchow.

>> my brother has found muchow. you all probably know more than i know. >> i want to know where the story ends that starts i bought a fish a week ago. but that mississippi press conference today was all of the things that made the story seem more strange and less scary since the news of the arrest broke. the whole point of the press conference however entertaining it was is that that is not the guy. authorities got the wrong guy. so now there remains the fact that real ricin really was sent to a judge, to a u.s. senator and to the white house. the guy authorities thought did it has been released and had the charges dropped. who sent the ricin to the white house? two years ago it was four georgia militiamen arrested and accused of plotting ricin

attacks against state and federal buildings. in '06 a survivalist in phoenix was convicted of trying to make ricin. in '08 a guy who seemed to be making it for fun in a las vegas hotel room got hospitalized before he was jailed. back in the '90s four minnesota tax protesters were convicted of trying to kill a federal marshal with ricin. there is an unsolved series of ricin-laced letters from a decade ago, the so-called fallen angel cases where real ricin was sent to the u.s. department of transportation. it was intercepted by the postal service in greenville, south carolina. ricin was also sent to the white house by someone identity still unknown whose apparent beef had to do with trucking regulations. that case is still unsolved. that was not the threat of ricin. that was real ricin. just like this case in mississippi. now today in very strange fashion it opened right back up again. joining us now is the reporter from the newspaper who first broke the story in mississippi. thank you very much for your

time. nice to have you here with us. >> thank you, rachel. glad to be here. >> do we know what exactly caused the feds to release paul kevin curtis today and drop the charges against him? >> well, all that i know of at this point, because they're not telling us a whole lot, yesterday his attorney had made a motion to drop the case because she said none of the evidence pointed to him. basically the only evidence that did was some lines in the letters that were sent that matched up with things that he had put online for years. he had been using the same tag line on his e-mails and a statement that he had used several times through the last ten years were used in those letters. so they, i think, tied that to him and then they didn't have any other physical evidence that i heard of. >> when the law enforcement went ahead with search warrants and searched his vehicle and his home and went through his computer as far as i understand

they found no physical evidence of ricin or any evidence that he was investigating it, looking it up. is that right? >> right. so far no traces of ricin or any research on it whatsoever. >> the attorney we just heard there, obviously speaking from his perspective as his attorney, she asserted the reason the charges were dropped is because law enforcement authorities in this case have found somebody who is a better suspect. we did hear today that somebody else had their home searched today by law enforcement authorities. can you tell us about that? >> his name is j. everett dutchke, a former aspiring politician. he is also a dojo master. he once had a band as well. he is also outspoken online very much like kevin curtis. some of the parallels, some of the things similar about these two are a little funny if it wasn't such a serious situation as you were talking about the

parallels are weird. they seem to have been involved in some sort of online feud, the two of them. they both claim to be members of mensa, both claim to be esteemed martial artists. is there a reason to believe these guys would do anything together? >> not from anything that i have seen. it appears their relationship was nothing but contentious. >> this is such a strange story i can hardly believe it. we're left with this very serious bottom line which is these weren't just threats about ricin. there really was deadly poison sent to the white house to a u.s. senator and to a mississippi judge. just in terms of your reporting on this have you had any indication that any physical evidence has been found whatsoever in any of the investigations so far to the actual production of ricin, castor beans found anywhere, anything that has turned up in terms of traces of this poison? >> i haven't heard anything today.

i know they were still searching as of late this afternoon and i haven't heard of anything they've turned over if they've released that yet or anything. i do know there was -- there were some situations in mr. dutchke's past that did make it appear he may have had a problem with the judge in mississippi that got the letter. >> all right. thank you for your time in helping us sort this out tonight. this is something i thought we were over and done with. appreciate you helping us figure it out. thank you. >> no problem. thank you. >> all right. today on wall street we found the intersection between twitter and crashing the economy. a case study in unexpected vulnerability straight ahead. [ male announcer ] how do you measure happiness?

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after a long and undeserved absence tonight the best new thing in the world. legitimately good news from people who did a great thing that benefits all of us and will keep some of us out of h-e-double hockey sticks. they had the presence of mind to tape themselves while doing this thing while still remaining sort of anonymous. we have the tape and the story at the end of the show. long awaited. please stay tuned.

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than 12 bucks to 3 bucks in less than one hour on that one day. this giant company was tanking in the stock market and at least immediately nobody knew why. it was really strain. when we found out why the answer was even stranger. quote, an erroneous headline that flashed across screens monday saying united filed for a second bankruptcy. that sent the stock plummeting. erroneous headline. they don't mean a newspaper got a fact wrong or spelled something wrong in a headline but they mean that the headline should never have existed on that day. what happened was an old headline from 2002 from six years earlier somehow randomly reappeared on the website of the florida newspaper the sun sentinel. again though it is a 6-year-old headline. that was not happening in 2008. it had happened in 2002. the mysterious headline popped up on the newspaper's website and became searchable and ended up getting alerted to the stock

market and even with united issuing a statement saying, hey, this isn't true, this is a 6-year-old headline, what is going on? even with all of that, yeah, shares of united rebounded that day but not all the way. they closed down 11% from where they started because of a newspaper headline that the internet repurposed in the wrong year. the stock market is weird. that unite airlines thing was september, 2008. then there was may you 6th, 2010. that day it was not just one company's stock bouncing all over the place for no substantive reason but the whole market. this starts with the folks at cnbc freaking out as they get the first hint that something is a little amiss. they're watching procter & gamble stock go off the cliff. >> p & g is now down 25%. >> if that is true, if that stock is there you go buy it. it can't be there. just go buy proctor and gamble. just go buy it.

>> is this a fund liquidating? >> stocks go boink and then back up. the markets still were down 300 points today but at one point down more than a thousand points. nasdaq and the new york stock exchange ultimately late in the day decided to do something amazing, to cancel, annul all of the trades that took place in that crazy moment. they decided to annul all of the trades between 2:40 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. eastern. if those trades showed a fluctuation of more than 60% of what they were before the flash crash. what on earth happened today? the 2010 flash crash. what on earth did happen that day? now we know. there's lots of initial speculation it was a fat finger

problem. that human error caused the big dramatic plunge. maybe somebody added an extra couple zeros to an order or something. that didn't end up being true. the securities and exchange commission spent months looking into what happened and issued a report that showed a perfect storm of conditions. it was an unusually turbulent day already for the markets driven mostly by stuff going on in europe. there was one really big trade, on purpose, legitimate trade that added to the volatility. structurally they said the quick trade nature of the markets essentially massively augmented the damage that was caused by the other things coinciding so for that reason to the extent that is a reason we got the 2010 flash crash in may of that year and all of the trades had to be annulled as if they were a fake marriage. weird things happen in the market. 6-year-old headline, weird, inexplicable volatility day and stuff getting annulled.

weird stuff happens. then there was what happened to the markets today. this is cnbc today just after 1:00 eastern. >> the markets kind of fallen apart here a little bit just a few moments ago. now all the way back up. in a very short period of time take a look at the right-hand side of your chart. we saw the dow jones industrial average go from a gain of 135 points to negative 12 in under a minute and a half. there are all sorts of rumors the market is very jittery about. we'll follow those up. >> look at that. look. that is what happened to the stock market. i know you're washing dishes and just listening and not looking. you actually have to come to the tv and look at this. this is what happened to the stock market today. it did regain its value but for a couple minutes in the middle of the day it was in free fall and for one very specific and turns out deliberate reason. at 1:07 p.m. eastern time the official twitter account for the associated press tweeted this out to their nearly 2 million followers.

breaking -- two explosions in the white house and barack obama is injured. that was not true. five minutes later the ap tweeted their account had been compromised and the earlier tweet about the white house was not true. something like 1500 people had already retweeted that initial very alarming message and the market had done this. for the rest of the day and still tonight this is what the ap twitter account looks like right now. they have suspended their account until they figure out what happened and how. in the meantime the very first question at today's white house press briefing was about the fake tweet and fake claims about explosions at the white house. jay carney assured everybody that president obama is fine. a group called the syrian electronic army which is described as a pro syrian regime, pro assad group took credit for the fake ap tweet today. they have taken credit for doing similar things to other news organizations like npr and cbs news. they have also claimed responsibility for hacking into the twitter account for fifa for the world soccer federation. apparently twitter keeps kicking them off twitter, off the

service but they keep popping up again under different names. by the end of the day of course twitters were all making fun of the whole episode but the fbi and securities and exchange commission are now launching an investigation into what happened. joining us now is matt honan a senior writer with "wired" magazine and has exclusive reporting on what happened with the fake ap tweet and its response today. matt was personally the victim of a hacking attack that took over his online existence. thanks for being here. i appreciate your time. i know you've got reporting to share on this story in terms of what happened and how it is being responded to. what can you tell us? >> well, i think one of the interesting things that happened here is initially there was some speculation that the password had been guessed but it looks like it was a spear fishing attack. the ap said that earlier. someone had gone in, sent an e-mail to ap employees that appeared to come from another ap employee and asked them to enter their log in information online and somebody did that.

>> okay. the syrian electronic army group that claims responsibility for this attack on the ap, is there a reason to believe they in fact did it? and is that type of spear fishing approach the way they have done this to other news agencies? >> i'm not sure what they've done to other news agencies but there is a pretty good reason to think they did it. they certainly pulled it off before. one of their ap accounts retweeted something from the syrian electronic army which you would have to think, you know, ap didn't actually want to do. taking credit for the other hack. they've shown an amazing ability to go after all of these people from the bbc to "60 minutes" to now the ap. it's been, you know, you don't want to condone it. it's been kind of impressive to see. >> the reason i think this deserves national attention is because we saw that harm done, that economic harm done on the market today. >> right. >> quickly reversed.

it got me thinking though about what would have happened if this had been hacked in a way that could not be easily disproven. if it had been hacked in a more complicated way, a way that involved more addresses and seeming corroboration of an initial report like this. it seems like this is a vulnerability in terms of at least the market's response to information like this that we don't quite have a handle on. is that fair? >> i think that's true. i think it is one of the reasons twitter has a pretty good ability to self-correct. you know, a lot of people weigh in and say especially if from one source that is wrong. i think it is one reason we need to be able to go back and correct our tweets now, a feature that i have called for and i've seen other people call for that i'd love to see. >> one thing people are going to be looking to here this is not something that seems specific to twitter in terms of the overall vulnerabilities as pointed out in our system but what do we know about how twitter is responding and their security practices? you say you've called for that. people to be able to correct these things. what else could they do and what are they doing? >> one of the things people have

been asking them to do for a long time is start a two step authentication. instead of just having a password you have a password and something else, usually a code sent to some sort of device so instead of just, if someone gets your password or gets you to enter it in a phishing scam you're not totally hosed because they still have to have the device where you get the code sent before they can log in somewhere new. what i was able to learn today is twitter which has been, you know, they posted a job opening about this a few months ago, has that in place and they are hoping to roll it out soon. >> might be a good occasion on which to get some attention for it. mat honan senior writer with "wired" magazine thanks for helping us. appreciate your time. recent twens -- now i'll talk like that for the west of the night. ready? recent trends have me wondering if serving as a u.s. senator has become a drag. a brand new data point to support the thesis, coming up

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seven newspapers across montana ran this ad on sunday, targeting democrat mark baucus. it was wrong to vote no on stopping gun violence. stand with us, not with gun manufacturers. this is a progressive change campaign committee ad.

and similar ads ran against the other red state, dems who also ran against background checks. the conventional wisdom has been that these red states voted against background checks for political reasons. background checks were going to fail, anyway. they didn't want the nra to come after them, so they voted no. they had to vote no because they're running for reelection. except today we found out max baucus is not running for reelection. after six terms he's quitting. he's been in the senate since i was five. the retirement of max baucus is not exactly being met with a wailing and gnashing of teeth. the huffington post made this their front page, essentially telling max baucus not to let the door hit him on his way

out. sided with banks, back bush tax cuts, lobbyist complex, recommended girlfriend for federal job, delayed health care reform, ditched supporters. in other words, goodbye, max baucus. david selota was more direct. good riddance, max baucus. but whatever you thought of him as a senator, there is a bigger question here, which is why are they all quitting? after the last election, the democratic leadership in the senate said their top goal was to keep these senators from retiring. jay rockefeller, tim johnson, frank lautenberg and tim hark in. their top goal was that none of those five guys would retire. all of those five guys are retiring, and now max baucus. 25 have quit just since '09. we're still doing the numbers in our own research, but as far as we can tell so far, this appears

to be the fastest pace of u.s. senators quitting that job in modern american history. why is the u.s. senate suddenly such an awful place to work? why are they all quitting? we have been trying for months now to book any of the senators who have decided to quit from either side of the aisle. i have even offered, which i never do, i have even offered that we would only talk about the senate as a place to work. we don't even need to talk policy. but so far not a single one of these quitting senators has said yes. listen, as a country we invest a lot of energy and money and figuring trying to decide who is going to go to the united states senate. tell us if something is wrong there. what is the secret about this place that has you fleeing like rats from a sinking ship? please, any of you quitting senators, we would love to know. marjorie, i can't stand you. you're too perfect.

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best new thing of the week. the fbi let people know they had arrested the suspect in the boston marathon bombing. this was the cover in the new york post. bag men. feds see these two pictured at boston marathon. and inside the paper, spread out over two pages, feds have two men in sight. pictures of men with two rings in their faces. except these two people had nothing to do with the boston bombings, nothing at all. the post immediately put out a statement that said they were wrong. the editor put out a statement that said, we stand by our story.

but then they said two men probed are cleared by investigators. please note that what you see on screen is us blurring the faces of these two men because the post did not. this all happened two days after the post reported they had a suspect in custody a day after the bombings. a saudi man, they said. that was also totally untrue and they never corrected that, either. they also never corrected that the bombing killed 12 people. it killed 3, but the post did not correct it because they just do not care. then on friday morning, when some people opened up that morning's copies of the new york post, they found a letter inside. that looks like it was written by the new york post editor. it looks like it was written on company letterhead. it says, dear readers, it is with great regret that i reflect on the new york post's reporting

and decisions after the marathon bombing. they consistently reported on the tragic incident that at least were ill-informed and speculative and at least intentionally misleading and harmful to those involved. the letter then explains what the post got wrong on the death toll and the supposed saudi subject. it apologizes for each of them in turn. then it said, this week the post has acted recklessly for good journalism. i would like to sincerely apologize to our readers, to the people of boston and the three men who were mistakenly identified as suspects. it's fake. they bought up copies of the paper, inserted the fake letter into the paper and distributed them around new york, including at the paper's headquarters. the saving souls by proxy of new york readers everywhere and possibly giving the people who own that paper a glimpse of what